It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s project is Hack-A-Dictionary (demo, source). It looks up words.

OK, I’ll be honest. I’m phoning this one in. I needed a break.

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s project is Hack-An-Asteroid (demo, source). It’s an asteroids clone with four levels.

I’m pretty happy with this as my first “visual” game. I made it in Unity3D.

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s project is Hack-An-Icecube (demo, source). It’s a failed attempt to make a game in Unity3D, the game engine/framework.

This is my first failure, which I think is good! I was getting bored only attempting things I could definitely succeed at in one day. That said, running out of time is fun. Wrestling the IDE isn’t. This was mostly wrestling the IDE, setting configs, and installing software.

I won’t continue this tomorrow, I’d rather do a new project each day (It’s called Hack-A-DAY)! But I might do another Unity3D project before the month is out.

The ice cubes load and fall, and that’s it. No controls, no game. I ran out of time.

This is an attempt to recreate One Hour Jam Cannon by juzek exactly. I ran out of time, but I made some progress getting Unity to work.

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s (catch-up) project is Hack-A-Homepage (demo, source). You can enter various information about yourself, such as links to your social media, and make your own little homepage.

This one took about another hour. I think it’s okay, but today was definitely a “do the numbers” game to catch up. Tomorrow I want to do something more fun and new.

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s (catch-up) project is Hack-A-Link (demo, source). You can enter a long link, and it will be shortened.

This one was also pretty easy. About an hour.

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s project is Hack-A-Paste (demo, source). You can upload text and share it with others.

Today’s project was an easy one, because I was busy. Took an hour or two.

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s project is Hack-A-Chat. (demo, source). It’s a free web chat for anyone that goes to the website.

Check out the link above to try out the live demo.

So far, not much easier. Another 8-hour day. I was hoping to do something with WebRTC today, but I didn’t get to it.

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s project is the Hack-A-Blog. (demo, source).

Check out the link above to try out the live demo. I’m proud of getting this one done in time. I think the next days will be easier, as I figured some things out already.

I’ve been prototyping an e-ink laptop.

I’m not the first, there have been many other such devices before. I came up with the idea independently, but the specifics are heavily inspired by the Ultimate Writer by NinjaTrappeur in 2018. Similar to him, my use case is typing without distractions, and reading books. E-ink displays are quite slow to update, so I don’t think it can serve as a general purpose computer. Here’s a video of it in action. It operates at one frame per second.

The electronics are not fully done. They need better secured, and I’m going to redo the cabling and power back.

I’m not the best woodworker, but I’m slowly learning. Here are pictures of case and lid action.

On the software end, shout outs to:

• the creator of the ultimate-writer software, NinjaTrappeur, who has been encouraging (and explained the right way to rewrite the stack, if you wanted to today).
• Ben Krasnow, who made a video about how to hack partial refresh on an e-ink display.

There’s a few things I’d like to polish still–even as a prototype this isn’t fully done.

• The raspberry pi and battery pack are currently sitting loose. They need secured, especially since they can fall out the open front.
• The software has some major problems. It doesn’t support Control-C, etc in linux, a must, and it doesn’t update the screen at boot until you press a key, which would be nice to fix.
• There’s no power switch. Right now you have to unplug it manually.
• I’d like to add a carrying handle.
• I’d like to tuck away the electronics behind a panel. They’re ugly.
• The wood looks rough in a few places. I want to hide some splintered wood, screw holes, etc.
• The USB cables have too much stress on them. I need to make a little more room in the wood, and use a right-angled connector in one place.

There’s also no default software, but that’s a feature. A prototype is for figuring out how I want the interface to work, and what I want it to do.

Parts list

• 7.5 inch e-ink screen from Waveshare (not particularly good) – $60
• Raspberry Pi 3 (Pi Zero, etc also work with no changes) – $35 (but unavailable)
• microsd card – $7
• Plywood and boards, wood glue – $15
• Plexiglass (to cover screen) – $10
• Bolts, washers, and nuts to secure it. – $5
• Circular window latch x2 – $8 (or use $10 smaller version)
• Hinge x2 – $2
• Total: $142

Power budget (at 5V):

• Keyboard: 500mW. Other USB keyboards use zero to within my measurement abilities.
• Screen: 0-250mW when updating. Hard to measure.
• Pi 3: 2000mW. I have the wifi chip enabled (the default) but I’m not actively connected to wifi.
• Pi Zero W: 650mW

A real-life test showed 5-6 hour battery life. Theory says (13Wh/battery * 4 batteries / 2.7 watts)=20 hours battery life. I’m investigating the discrepancy. In theory, swapping for a Pi Zero W and a better keyboard would give 72-hour battery life.

qr-backup v1.1 is released. qr-backup is a command-line Linux program. You can use it to back up a file as a series of QR codes. You can restore the QR codes using a webcam or scanner, and get back the original file.

The main features of qr-backup are ease-of-use and futureproofing (restore does not require qr-backup).

Please report any bugs on github. Once this is stable, I will do the first pip/package manager release. To test the alpha, check out the latest code using git.

See also USAGE and extensive FAQ.

New features in v1.1:

• Feature complete. New features are unlikely to be added. Future efforts will focus on quality, GUIs, and porting.
• restore using qr-backup. Previously, the only restore was a bash one-liner (which still works).
  • qr-backup --restore restores using the webcam
  • qr-backup --restore IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE restores from scanned images
• After generating a PDF backup, qr-backup automatically does a digital test of the restore process
• Erasure coding. Lose up to 30% of QRs and restore will still work, as long as you are using qr-backup to restore
• Increased code density, which about cancels out the erasure coding.
• Back up directories and files. qr-backup makes a .tar file for you
• Option to use password protection (encryption)
• Option to print multiple copies of every QR code
• Option to randomize order of QR codes
• Optionally print extra cover sheet instructions on how to restore. For long-term archivists.
• Option to add custom notes and labels to each page
• Improved support for using qr-backup in a pipe
• Various bugfixes
• See CHANGELOG for complete details

P.S. As a special request, if anyone is on OS X, let me know if it works for you?